Embrace eLearning and all its benefits

I wrote the notes, on which this post is based, just over a year ago with the view to add to my podcasts. It didn’t happen, for lots of reasons but, having found my notes again, thought I’d share it with you.

With or without the suggestions from FELTAG, does your organisation have a huge bank of courses to be developed and rolled-out to learners?

Are you, like so many other learning providers, unsure of how to approach this daunting task?

Before I retired, as an eLearning Adviser, the more I engaged with Learning Providers, the more I felt that the best solution, to embrace eLearning, was to develop a complete curriculum rather than individual courses.

A complete curriculum that consists of several individual, interrelated modules, which are to be completed by learners in sequence and/or as a cumulative whole and/or as JITTs (Just in Time Teaching). This approach offers many advantages to both you, the learning provider, and your learners.

Let me elaborate just a few of these advantages so that you are in a position to make an informed decision as to embrace this approach, or not.

In this post, I’ll talk about…

Presenting content as a comprehensive whole

Rolling-out curriculum to a well-defined group of learners

Ensuring consistency throughout courses

Saving training costs and

Increasing scalability

Presenting content as a comprehensive whole: The main advantage of developing a complete curriculum in eLearning is the ability to present the content in its entirety.
Traditionally, though pertaining to the same subject and catering to the same target audience, eLearning courses were designed and developed independent of each other. By designing and developing a curriculum, the entire content can be made available at a single, centralized repository. This helps your learners access the content they need, easily and efficiently (even if it is a particular topic). Managing the content also becomes more hassle-free and manageable, when it is stored in a single place.

Rolling-out curriculum to a well-defined group of learners/employees: Once an eLearning curriculum is developed, it can be assigned to a group of learners/employees, which need to take it.
If a particular sub-set within the group needs to access particular modules within the course, access can be granted/ monitored through group permissions. This eliminates the need to break the content into individual courses and thereby losing connectivity.

Ensuring consistency throughout the course: Developing an eLearning curriculum ensures all the modules of the course are uniform in all its aspects, including …

Graphical User Interface (GUI)

Navigational Elements

Colour palette

Layouts for:

Assessments

Interactivities

Instructions

Font style/size/color for titles, sub-titles, normal text

Save training costs and increase scalability: Developing an eLearning curriculum helps reduce training costs as a single course can be made accessible to as many learners/employees as required, as many times as needed. Thus, it improves scalability.

These are just a few benefits of developing an entire curriculum in eLearning.

So, the next time you find yourself confronted with an extensive curriculum to be rolled-out to your learners/employees, don’t balk.

Embrace eLearning and produce comprehensive courses that have all the benefits listed above.